Abstract
Political candidates are using social media in their political campaigns. While earlier studies have focused on text-centric social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, visual-centric platforms such as TikTok have become more popular. The aim of this study is to investigate how TikTok can be used more effectively in political campaigns by examining the Singapore Presidential Election held in August 2023. Posts from the TikTok accounts of the three political candidates in the Singapore Presidential Election in 2023 were analyzed during the campaign period from June to September 2023. The findings from this study suggests that social media can only complement the other tools of the marketing communications mix in political campaigns. In addition, given the nature of social media, and specifically on TikTok, politicians should consider the use of personalized content that feature celebrities, are entertaining and exploit the interactive nature of social media to engage with the electorate. As visual-centric social media platforms are distinct from the earlier text-centric platforms, these findings provide a more holistic understanding of social media marketing in political campaigns.